75F Inc., a global market leader in wireless building automation for commercial buildings, today announced it has completed an $18M Series A round of financing co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Climate Initiative with participation from Building Ventures, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and Clean Energy Trust. The company, founded in 2012, has raised a total of $25M to date.
This marks the first investment for Oil & Gas Climate Initiative in the buildings space, and 75F aligns with Breakthrough Energy Ventures' work to significantly reduce emissions from buildings, one of the largest contributors to climate change.
"We are honored to have this incredible group of investors backing our vision and helping 75F take an enormous step as the global leader in the industry," said Deepinder Singh, CEO for 75F Inc. "This strategic funding will allow 75F to invest in key positions, continue to innovate our product and customer solution, and strengthen our partner network across North America, APAC, Middle East, China, and Australia."
Traditional building controls systems are overbuilt and require extensive resources to install, setup, custom program, and maintain which creates high costs of acquisition and ownership. The 75F system reduces install time, makes occupants more productive and comfortable, while cutting costs for facility managers.
75F offers a vertically-integrated smart building solution that includes wireless sensors, equipment controllers and cloud-based software delivering predictive, proactive building automation right out-of-the-box. Literally easy enough for elementary students to install and configure, 75F lowers install time and related costs. Benefits of 75F's solution include:
- Energy savings
- 75F's predictive, intelligent system reduces energy costs by 30 to 50%
- Improved air quality
- 75F's system knows when to take advantage of outside air to provide free cooling and improve the health and well-being of occupants
- Faster Return on Investment (ROI)
- The smart technology allows businesses to make better use of their resources. Lower installation costs and savings from reduced energy use results in a typical ROI of under 2 years
- Weather forecasting/Increase comfort
- Your smartphone knows when it's going to rain – shouldn't your HVAC system? 75F's machine learning can track things like weather and room occupancy to regulate space and ensure comfort all year round.
- Self-optimization
- The smart HVAC solution begins learning the behavior of your building from the moment it is installed offering maximized energy savings without sacrificing comfort
- Scaled deployment
- 75F's system offers solutions that allow cloud scaling that can go across a businesses' entire portfolio right out of the box
Funds from this round will be used to scale support and operations, invest in R&D, upgrade office locations in both the Twin Cities and Bangalore, India, and open additional satellite office locations. 75F recently filled key marketing, supply chain, and finance leadership roles in the U.S. as well as a finance leadership role in APAC. The company is currently recruiting for sales, software engineers, and product engineers as well as service, support, and supply chain associates in both the U.S. and APAC.
Breakthrough Energy
Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) invests in companies that leverage innovative technologies to help address climate change. Backed by many of the world's top business leaders, BEV has more than $1 billion in committed capital to support bold entrepreneurs building companies that can significantly reduce emissions from agriculture, buildings, electricity, manufacturing, and transportation. The fund was created in 2016 by the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.
"Six percent of global and 12 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere come from buildings," said Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures. "We know we can combat this by designing the next generation of buildings, but we can also make significant gains by upgrading existing real estate with smart technology. 75F has created a unique software and hardware solution powered by machine learning that reduces energy costs and emissions at the same time."
Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI)
OGCI is a $1+ billion fund investing in technologies and business models which lower the carbon footprint of the energy and industrial sectors and their value chains. The fund was created by the CEOs of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative to take practical action on climate change.
OCGI invests in innovative companies with late-stage technologies and business models that can lower the carbon footprint of the energy and industrial sectors. They actively support these companies in achieving commercial success by using the expertise and resources of their OGCI member companies and broader network.
Pratima Rangarajan, CEO of OGCI Climate Investments, said: "Reducing emissions across all sectors is crucial to meeting our climate goals. 75F's innovative smart building solution is easy to install, provides savings for building operators and cuts energy loss from buildings. These types of scalable technologies are needed if we want global adoption that can make a significant impact on carbon."
For more information, please visit www.75f.io.
About 75F: 75F is a U.S.-based building intelligence company making smart building automation affordable and easy to deploy for all commercial buildings to optimize the occupant experience and deliver operational efficiencies. 75F leverages IoT, Cloud Compute and Machine Learning for data-driven, proactive building intelligence and controls for HVAC, lighting and energy optimization. 75F is a proud portfolio member of Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) facilitated by NREL, and is national winner for energy efficiency in the CleanTech Open. 75F's mission is to improve occupant productivity through enhanced comfort and indoor air quality – while saving energy and the environment. 75F has delivered thousands of energy-efficient, comfortable and healthy spaces to enthusiastic customers who rave about the results. 75F makes your building work for you. Follow @75f_io.